About

What is CaRCC?

CaRCC – the Campus Research Computing Consortium – is an organization of dedicated professionals developing, advocating for, and advancing campus research computing and data* and associated professions. Current focus areas include connecting the broader research computing and data ecosystem, professionalization and workforce development, and defining stakeholders and shared value propositions for the community at a time of accelerating change.

How to get involved?

Simply volunteer to work with one of the current working groups, noting that this does not require formally joining with a CaRCC institutional membership… To volunteer, e-mail committee chairs or help@carcc.org.

* Research computing and data involves people, scholarship, and resources (cyberinfrastructure) supporting the needs of researchers and research leveraging compute, data, networking, and software, broadly defined, including the professionals who execute and support it. Whereas entities supporting research computing and data historically emerged from operating and supporting high performance computing, the needs, capabilities and technologies have sufficiently broadened the scope of research cyberinfrastructure into virtualization, support for the cloud, containers, middleware, workflows, data management, data movement, compliance and security, user training, support of instruction using advanced research computing and data, on-boarding into new technologies, and deep engagement (“facilitation”) to help guide researchers.

CaRCC also refers to:

A funded NSF RCN award OAC-1620695 (PI: Jim Bottum) “RCN: Advancing Research and Education through a national network of campus research computing infrastructures – The CaRC Consortium”.

An extension of the ACI-REF** experiment, a group of ~6-12 campuses who have banded together in an attempt to figure out how to sustain and maintain the massive growth in demand for research computing on our campuses by sharing, collaborating, working together and developing best practices.

A virtual organization of committed people working to provide products that help to advance research computing and data, such as helping to define the profession, to bring communities together, and to understand the common challenges and future needs of research computing and data, broadly defined.

CaRCC is still defining itself, continuing to evolve and open to new ideas. Volunteer to help us! Current areas of high priority, based on survey results and discussions among participants, include the following areas:

CI workforce development and professionalization.

Developing the people network of CI, research computing and data professionals while promoting various facing roles, such as researcher-facing, systems-facing, stakeholder-facing, and software/data-facing.

Defining stakeholders and value propositions for the CI, research computing and data communities, broadly defined.

Understanding the current state and future roadmap for advocation, support, and sustainability of research computing on campuses and beyond.

If you want to help shape the evolution of our CI, research computing and data ecosystem, or learn more about our current efforts, please contact us at help@carcc.org! For more information on 2017-2018 activities, see the 2017-2018 Committees link. We also also soliciting committed volunteers for the 2018-2019 committees.

** ACI-REF refers to the NSF OAC-1341935 “Advanced Cyberinfrastructure – Research and Educational Facilitation: Campus-Based Computational Research Support” award (PI: Bottum) that supporting building best practices and a network of facilitators support research computing on six campuses (Clemson U, Harvard U, U Wisconsin at Madison, U Southern California, U Utah, and U Hawaii). For more information about ACI-REF, see the WWW page at: http://aciref.org.